I personnaly think that focussing on labelling war as religious or ethnical or what ever else than political is just missing the target.
It's basically a way to simplify the problematic by putting it in a box. There are two kind of problematic in war: politic and legallity of the action...
Religion is too often used to undermine the legal aspect of it. Especially when it comes to war in Muslim countries.
Recently, most of the Darfur politic analist I have been meeting just conceded that probably Bashir did not have much choices with what was going on. Based on the fact that he wanted to stay in power and we did not want to have the Muslim Brotherhood or worst to come back in power.
Somehow, the bad muslim and the nice african animists tend to disapear...

But I have to read the paper once I found it as the link you gave did not work either for me.

M-A